Friday, August 20, 2010

Got Salmonella?

Nope. Thanks to Brewster the rooster and his flock of egg laying beauties we are salmonella free. For now. I hope. I am not positive where the outbreaks and recalls have been because we don't buy eggs. The new flock has really started laying in the last few weeks and it won't be long before we are over run with eggs. Chickens are probably the easiest way of providing your own food that we have found so far. You don't have to feed them much if you give them enough room to forage for bugs and such. Throw a rooster in the mix and you will end up with chicks. You also end up with fertilized eggs for breakfast which is nasty so I recommend keeping the rooster separate if you have one.

If you were trying to get ready to hole up and wait out the next global disaster then a bunch of birds of one the first things you want. If you look at stuff survivalist talk about you would think you need lots of ammo and some sort of concrete bunker, but really if you can't eat that doesn't do you much good so really you need a way to get water; either a way to pump from a well, a spring or stream although streams can easily be damned up by the a-hole with a ammo and the concrete bunker. I would think the best thing you could have is a small flock of a chickens including at least one rooster, a couple of goats both boys and girls, and some seeds to start growing stuff from which you could save more seeds.

Twenty chickens provide a lot of food if they are all laying. The eggs will be piling up soon even using the eggs for three households we will have way more than we want. I may try to sell some, but selling is not my strong point. That is one thing about any kind of farming; no matter what you grow in order to make money off it you have to have basic business skills like selling. Almost all businesses live or die on the quality of salesman ship. Even bad business can make money with a good salesman. I am not a sales guy, just don't have those natural people skills. That's probably also why I will end up in a feud with a a-hole who stocked up on ammo and I will find my self locked in a basement for food like those people in The Road.

When we had a rooster, I used to take a flashlight to the egg. It is called candelling. You can see if there is something extra in the egg. My neighbor had to shoot my rooster because it kept attacking her and her son when we were gone, kinda like a gaurd dog.

Yeah, we have friends who have nothing but roosters for some strange reason and the kids all run from them because they peck and chase em. I always had this idea of chickens being sorta laid back easy going peaceful things, but some of are em are mean.

I've heard a lot about mean roosters and that people have been attacked by them, etc. We haven't had that experience...yet. Our roosters are friendly. One is definitely the BMOC and keeps the other rooster's tail feathers plucked out so he won't be as handsome, but the chicken's aggression is only amongst themselves.

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